Rainier de Fort-Menares contributed to the article.
San Jose State’s Academic Senate held a meeting Monday afternoon in room 285 of the engineering building, where it unanimously passed a resolution to honor and recognize a day of remembrance.
The sense of senate resolution would also have the university build a mural outside Yoshihiro Uchida Hall as a memoriam to the Japanese American citizens affected by SJSU, where they were incarcerated in the hall named after Uchida.
The third part of the resolution includes the creation of a statue on campus dedicated to the incarceration of Japanese American students.
The resolution passing means San Jose State will officially recognize its involvement in the forced removal and incarceration of local Japanese Americans during Executive Order 9066.
Associate Students. President Nina Chuang introduced the idea of having an annual day of remembrance, a constructed mural in front of Yoshihiro Uchida Hall and a statue that honors Japanese Americans affected by the university.
“In this resolution, not only do we document this history, we also highlight individuals, individuals who were incarcerated, processed and returned back to San Jose State to serve our students,” Chuang said.
She said the resolution recognizes how important it is as an institution to move forward and promote change in a system that wasn't designed for everyone.
Kenneth Peter, member of the Academic Senate and political science professor, said he recognizes all of the good work SJSU has done for over 100 years, but he wants to acknowledge some of the wrongs they have done.
“This is the first opportunity that I think we have had here to acknowledge this university's role and one of the greatest violations of civil rights in our community,” Peter said. “And it has relevance not only to apologize and atone for the bad things that were involved with that violation, but to remind us that this is continuing work.”
He said the first step toward reconciliation is telling the truth.
“Not only is it one of the most important resolutions that I've ever seen, a student senator breathing, it's one of the most important resolutions that has ever come before this academic center,” Peter said.
Victoria Taketa, SJSU alumna and former Japantown Neighborhood Association president, was one of the community members invited to the Academic Senate meeting.
“I look at the courageous stand that the Academic Senate will take in supporting this proclamation today,” Taketa said. “Because it’s about taking a look at responsibility and our culpability in terms of silencing, omitting, marginalizing communities from participating.”
She said while she was a student at SJSU, she took a Black studies class that helped her learn about a history that was kept from her education. Taketa said the class inspired her to document the lost history of Asian Americans in the U.S.
“I came to San Jose to fight for redress and reparations for my parents and for all Japanese Americans,” she said. “This resolution will bring a measure of healing that the Japanese Americans deserve and which the broader community can also benefit.”
Chuang said the document holds SJSU accountable in taking the proper steps to repair the lost history and voices of Japanese Americans.
“This resolution recognizes how important it is for us as an institution to move forward in our change in the system that wasn’t designed for us,” she said.
She thanked the Japantown community members who visited the meeting and assisted in writing the resolution.
Peter said this solution is the first he’s ever seen that has been so thoroughly researched, presented and important.
“I think it’s really a historic day that the official voice of faculty and students of San Jose State University acknowledged the horrors of what happened here in 1942,” he said. “If 10 and 15 years from now, I walked by Yoshida Hall and I see a mural at a memorial that reminds everybody of one of the worst chapters in the history of San Jose State – and I see that this is still a university that practices academic freedom and protects the voices of everybody, then I'll be happy.”
La Donna Yumori-Kaku, SJSU alumna and Sequoia Japanese American Citizens League member, said it was nice to see the university make the movement forward toward the right direction.
She said other educational systems might recognize what SJSU is doing and teach their own institutions.
“I want to say maybe San Jose State is setting the precedent because there are other schools and university that don't recognize a day of remembrance,” she said.
Yumori-Kaku said there needs to be an active Asian community to realize that our history needs to be corrected because it wasn't written.
“Norman Mineta, Yoshihiro Uchida, Mike Honda and Paul Sakamoto . . . these are, like, big names that some people may not know,” Chuang said. “These individuals highlighted, it also shows and tells a story. It tells us not only the background and what our school has done in the past, it highlights the individuals that were impacted.”
She said one of the points of the resolution is the creation of an educational day of remembrance to educate the SJSU community.
“So this resolution not only documents that history, it puts it at the forefront of what we do,” Chuang said. “At the end of the day, any student of this university has the right to know what happened at this system – who walked on these streets before we did.”
